La Vie En Noir

We had become addicted to this pastry shop located on our walk home from school. Called Bread & Roses, it was clearly friendly to English speakers. But I still always spoke French since I told them (in French) that I need to practice. There were two very friendly women who worked there and I always saw an older gentleman who seemed like the owner. One time I ordered something and pointed and said "celui-ci" but he corrected me, saying it was "celle-ci" (because the fennel pretzel snack Geoff wanted was feminine apparently) and he sympathized with how difficult the French language was to learn.

The shop had amazing pain au chocolat any hour of the day (although one afternoon I got the last one) and melt-in-your-mouth mini brioche loafs. They also had a little snack menu that was a nice change from the standard café items - quiches, tarts, salads. A couple of days later, I discovered my new favorite dessert there - the chocolat tartelette. Theirs was the perfect size for two people with an evenly and lightly browned perfectly flaky crust. The interior was basically just soft chocolate, similar to ganache. I adore that all chocolate defaults to dark chocolate in Paris instead of milk chocolate. And this was no exception.

That night we had made plans to visit with Geoff's friend Mark, who had been living and working in Paris for a few years. We hadn't seen him in about five years, but a friend is a friend - especially when you're abroad. Geoff had gotten the directions to his place, which was off our tourist map. So when we got out of the metro at his stop, Geoff directed us 'up the hill'. The neighborhood contrasted sharply to ours. The 20 'Arrondissements' of Paris began with number one in the center above the Seine River and couting up while circling around the center like a snail. We lived in the 6th a few blocks from the river, pretty close to the snail's center. Visiting Mark, we had ventured to the 10th. It had a much more neighborhood feel, and it was clear why this was off the tourist map. There were little local neighborhood restaurants featuring mostly Turkish and North African cuisine with people sitting outside and chatting. There were also some convenience stores, supermarkets and a mini-department store. But there was no 'traditional' Paris café and no open-air shop selling postcards and Paris bags. Still, it was a bustling little neighborhood.

When we got to Mark's address, someone was walking out of the gate and held the door for us so we entered without the code. That was a first. We found his building and Geoff said his apartment was on the 5th floor which in Europe really means the 6th. So we started the climb and reaching the top, found his apartment and rang the bell.

He opened the door and greeted us with hugs. His apartment was small but nicely renovated. The door frames were the thick original wood mouldings painted in the highest sheen of maroon paint I've ever seen. He said it turned out a bit shinier than he had expected, but I liked it. He also had one wall in the living room painted a high sheen burnt orange which along with the dark stained original wood floors and brown leather sofa and chair warmed the room.

Thin with dark hair and glasses, Mark looked and acted the part of a scientist, which is what he was. More specifically, he did research on the moon and Mars. Since he worked for the French government, it was one of those jobs which was essentially permanent and he said even if he never showed up again, he was pretty sure it would take his boss two years of paperwork and red tape to fire him. Geoff was surprised to hear that there was income tax, which somehow I knew. France raked in 20 percent for sales tax on all purchases which you might think would allow for a smaller income tax. In wondering aloud where the French government spends all of its earnings, I suggested maybe health care and unemployment - both of which I've heard are fantastic in France. In fact, IVF is covered throughout France as are all medical procedures and medications.

According to Mark, renovating an apartment in Paris caused many headaches, even more than the average American renovation. One day, he had returned to find his dining room table with only one of the original four legs still intact. Apparently they had used it as a work table and it couldn't withstand the pressure. He also discovered a hole drilled right through the top of another table. Still they had gotten all his appliances in and working - although he complained that the French don't seem to be clever enough to tuck the unattractive electric boxes somewhere less obvious than the hallway wall. He mentioned that actually his stove had only just gotten working a few weeks before. Geoff was stunned and half-jokingly asked him how he had made a veal blanquette before then. Not surprisingly, that had never come up.

Although Mark had already lived here for 3 years, he said he still didn't speak French well. He had never really taken formal lessons he said but he had picked up enough to get by. He had a great book that I flipped through about French grammar - "Grammaire Expliquée du Francais" by CLE International. He did speak French at work, but all of his writing and reading at work was done in English which not surprisingly was the primary language of the scientific community. But he had made a conscious decision not to learn French all the way - what was the point, he figured, if he wasn't going to be staying here? He clearly wasn't thrilled to be in Paris. He said he didn't particularly like the city and he thought he'd be moving in a few years.

For some reason, I found myself taking his detest for Paris and the French personally. But then we got on the topic of the United States and it seemed he didn't like that there either. I thought about the expression 'la vie en noir' one of my French teachers had taught me, the anti-thesis to 'la vie en rose.' But just when I thought he had only a dark side, we found the thing that was not a source of irritation to him - his work. He loved his job because he didn't have to teach and interacted only barely with some mostly competent graduate students. In the United States, he said, a research job would never be unaccompanied by teaching. His work sounded interesting although it's out of the realm of what comes up in my daily existence. In fact, I rarely wondered why more asteroids hit one side of the moon as opposed to the other, but according to Mark there was a good reason for that.

Our conversation got me thinking about how so often in life it seemed like people were waiting for something - waiting for the event to happen that was going to make them happier. They were waiting to move or to get married or to have children or to retire. It seemed wrong to me. It's not that I thought we should have everything we wanted immediately, but that there needed to be more appreciation and awareness of the present moment. It was ironic that young people longed to get married and have children while older people often longed to be young. Why was it that people ached for what was next or before? What about what is now?

We spent a few hours talking and then figured we should head out since we had planned to wake up early the next morning to drive to Normandy. Mark walked out with us and took us on a tour of some of the surrounding streets. Some of the areas seemed a bit sketchy and perhaps picking up on our unease he mentioned how crime-free Paris was. Geoff wondered out loud then why were there so many locked doors and security codes just to be able to buzz someone's bell? Nonetheless, we soon were near the Place de la Republique which had a much more bustling Friday night in the city feel to it. We hopped on the metro there and headed home.

Back in our neighborhood, the streets teemed with vendors, bars and restaurants. I tried to see from Mark's eyes what it was he didn't like. Any touristy area oozed a certain phoniness - you'd often find waiters soliciting customers to sit in an empty restaurant and English menus were easy to spot. But then I saw the Seine sparkling at night under the glow of the ghastly intricacies of Notre Dame Cathedral, and wondered, how can you not be in love with Paris?